Innovative Approaches in Qualitative Research: Building a Meaningful Corpus

1. INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods 'Corpus Construction' as an alternative logic of sampling

2. ‘Corpus Construction’

3. ‘Corpus Construction’ • Defining the sites and subjects of in situ work • Making decisions about your field site(s) – how a social phenomenon of interest is mapped out onto spatial terrain • Selecting people to follow, observe and/or interview • Selecting media / artifacts from the setting for further analysis

4. Competence and Innovation • Competence (Bauer and Gaskell) • Systematic • Issues of public accountability • Innovation (Becker) • Challenge conventional thinking

5. Doing Innovative Research • Starting Where You Are (Lofland and Lofland) • Commitment and Curiosity • Access and ‘getting in’ • Willingness to go where others won’t • The inconvenient and uncomfortable • The illegitimate

6. Approaches • Total enumeration (i.e. census) • Statistical random sample • Snowball sample (iteration again) • Convenience sample (bad)

7. Random vs. Systematic • ‘Corpus Construction’ • Typifies unknown attributes • Systematic selection to some alternative rationale (not a convenience sample) • Random Statistical Sampling • Distribution of already known attributes • Sample has a distribution of criterion = population as a whole • Popular misconception – the greater the # in the sample, the more accurate

8. Unknowable Populations Many populations of ‘individuals’ are knowable, however… • What about ‘actions?’ • What about ‘situations?’ • Open systems (i.e. language) = infinite populations

9. Mapping the Unknowable Social strata, functions and categories (known) Representations (unknown) Varieties of: Belief Attitudes Opinions Stereotypes Ideologies Worldviews Habits Practices [Bauer and Gaskell]

10. Mapping the Unknowable • Iteration until Saturation • Don’t collect too much data [logistical limits]

11. Problems of Social Strata in Cross-Cultural Research

12. Demographic Form

13. Extending Selection Strategies: Sampling for ‘Innovation’ • Identify the case that is likely to upset your thinking and look for it – (the counter-example) e.g. morphine, opium, heroin addicts • If someone says it has already been studied, its probably time to study it again. • Studying the non-serious and the ‘boring’

14. Loose Ends: Selecting Field Sites • Some work is clearly ‘sited’ • Some is not (amorphous social settings) – and therefore locating such work will be more involved • Sites may be ‘open’ or ‘closed’

15. Loose Ends: Collecting text, images, data • Text produced in the process of research vs. texts produced for other purposes • Bauer and Gaskell’s simplified treatment of newspapers, etc. – newspapers as… • vs. Becker’s concern with the ‘sociology of record keeping’ • in media studies, the ‘active audience’

16. In Conclusion - Representativeness? • The problem of unknowable populations • Rather than ‘representativeness’ we are seeking ‘range’ and variation in the social phenomenon under study • To what effect? Challenging notions of what is ‘natural’ or ‘universal’ about a phenomenon

17. To Review • Population and the problem of unknowable populations • Selection for range/diversity of the social phenomenon rather than representativeness • Selection for innovation • Stopping criterion

18. For Thursday • Read Lofland and Lofland section on logging data • Read UC guidelines for protection of human subjects